Barbara Bach

Barbara Bach
c. 1977
Born	Barbara Goldbach (1947-08-27) August 27, 1947 Queens, New York, U.S.
Occupation	Actress
Years active	1968–1986
Spouse(s)	Augusto Gregorini (m. 1968; div. 1978) Ringo Starr (m. 1981)
Children	2, including Francesca Gregorini

Barbara Bach (born Barbara Goldbach; August 27, 1947) is an American actress and model who played the Bond girl Anya Amasova in the James Bond film The Spy Who Loved Me (1977) as well as the spy Maritza Petrović in Force 10 from Navarone (1978). She married Ringo Starr, former member of The Beatles, in 1981.

Early life

Bach was born in Rosedale, Queens, and grew up in Jackson Heights, the daughter of Marjorie (1920-) and Howard I. Goldbach (1922–2001), a policeman. Her mother is Irish Catholic, while her father was Jewish (from a family from Germany, Austria, and Romania).^[1] She attended a Catholic high school, Dominican Commercial High School, in Jamaica, Queens.^[2] Bach left school at the age of 16 to become a model. She is fluent in Italian and has a working knowledge of French and Spanish.^[3]

Career

Her acting career started in Italy, where she played Nausicaa in L'Odissea, an eight hours long TV adaptation of Homer's famous epic poem The Odyssey, directed by Franco Rossi and produced by Dino de Laurentiis.

In 1972, Bach co-starred with two other Bond girls, Claudine Auger and Barbara Bouchet, in the mystery La Tarantola dal ventre nero (a giallo film) and had small roles in other Italian films.

In 1977, Bach portrayed the Russian spy Anya Amasova in the James Bond film The Spy Who Loved Me. Bach remarked after the film that Bond is "a chauvinist pig who uses girls to shield him against bullets."^[4] The following year she appeared in the movie Force 10 from Navarone. She lost a role to actress Shelley Hack when she auditioned for season four of the television series Charlie's Angels.^[5] During an interview with Johnny Carson on May 9, 1979, she said that lost the audition for Charlie's Angels because she was too sophisticated and mature.^[3] Bach has 28 films to her credit. She ceased working as an actress in the mid-1980s. She featured in her own pictorial in Playboy in June 1977,^[6] and she was the cover girl and had her own pictorial in January 1981.^[7] She also had a cameo in a September 1987 special issue on the Bond girls.^[8]

Personal life

Family

Bach met Italian businessman Augusto Gregorini on a flight to Rome in 1966. They were married in 1966 and moved to Italy where they had a daughter, singer-songwriter Francesca Gregorini (born August 7, 1968) and a son Gianni (born in 1972). In 1975, Bach separated from Gregorini and moved back to the United States with her two children.

Bach met Ringo Starr on the set of the film Caveman in February 1980, and they were married on April 27, 1981, a few weeks after the film's release. In recent years, Bach has accompanied Starr on his tours and has appeared in some of his music videos, playing on some of his songs. They live in the English village of Cranleigh.

Joe Walsh, guitarist with the bands the James Gang and the Eagles, married Barbara Bach's sister, Marjorie Bach, in Los Angeles on December 13, 2008.

Charities

Bach started the Self Help Addiction Recovery Program (S.H.A.R.P.) with the help of George Harrison, Eric Clapton and Pattie Boyd, the former wife of both Harrison and Clapton. Bach and Starr created The Lotus Foundation, a charity with many sub-charities.

Vegetarianism

According to the International Vegetarian Union, Bach and husband Ringo Starr practice vegetarianism.^[9]

Filmography

See also

• James Bond filmography

References

External links

• Barbara Bach at the Internet Movie Database